Amber Boyer

It's another busy weekend in Nashville - but when is Music City not packed with events, festivals, affairs? - and we're back with our Critic's Choice recommendations to have you cut through the theatrical flotsam and jetsam and find a cultural opening that's a good fit for your harried lifestyle. Nashville Opera opens its staging of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock at Noah Liff Opera Center, Way Off Broadway Productions unveils its version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Music Valley Event Center, Street Theatre Company invites you to the see their staging of Lynn Nottage's Sweat at their new venue on Elm Hill Pike and Nashville Rep continues its celebration of 10 years of The Ingram New Works Festival at Nashville Children's Theatre.

As the magical floating stage descends from the upper recesses of Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, anticipation grows and attention is directed to the half dozen actors seated upon the stage, their chairs as unique as the performers themselves. Gathered together by director Joy Tilley Perryman, the dozen actors who will be seen and heard in the company's performance of Listen to Your Mother, a collection of monologues on the subject of parenthood and the myriad relationships to be found among parents and children, were each cast for his or her particular strengths, whether it's their ability to tell a story or to engage an audience.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! It's May 17, 2017, and summer - or a reasonable facsimile thereof - has arrived in Nashville, with temperatures already climbing toward the 90s! When prompts the musical question: What's on your agenda for the summer of 2017? Anything we should know about and, more importantly, write about?

They're dishing up some tasty Rumors at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre - along with the bountiful buffet of Southern delicacies - while at Donelson's The Larry Keeton Theatre, the last two performances of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest are served up this weekend, and the national touring company of Mamma Mia! winds up its weeklong stand at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Andrew Jackson Hall. And the intrepid Nashville Repertory Theatre Professional Interns present their very own production of Gruesome Playground Injuries.

At long last, Music City Confidential is back to help you get caught back on the talk of the town - all the news that's fit to print about the Nashville theater community - and to immerse you in the minutiae of life in Theater City (a term we've been trying to copyright since we were in junior high with Thespis, Aristophanes and Martha Wilkinson).

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Shows are opening (Carolyn German unveils her latest, Go From Here, and Nashville Ballet revives Carmina Burana, both this weekend), shows are closing (your last chance to catch The Taffetas at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre before they go the way of The Plaids is this weekend) and The Miss Firecracker Contest is back onstage at Donelson's Larry Keeton Theatre for the second of three weekends. Obviously, the 2016 theater season continues to reveal itself at a breakneck pace, giving audiences a veritable buffet of offerings from which to choose.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Britt Byrd takes on the challenging role of Carnelle Scott in The Larry Keeton Theatre's upcoming production of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest, running at the Donelson theater April 14-30 – the first presentation of a non-musical at The Keeton in quite some time, according to producer Jamie London.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Britt Byrd takes on the challenging role of Carnelle Scott - and Nashville photographer Jenny Petit Steiner has the pictures to prove it - in The Larry Keeton Theatre's upcoming production of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest, running at the Donelson theater April 14-30 - the first presentation of a non-musical at The Keeton in quite some time, according to producer Jamie London.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Britt Byrd takes on the challenging role of Carnelle Scott in The Larry Keeton Theatre's upcoming production of Beth Henley's The Miss Firecracker Contest, running at the Donelson theater April 14-30 – the first presentation of a non-musical at The Keeton in quite some time, according to producer Jamie London.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the notebooks, datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.

Sometimes it seems there is so much theater happening that it's difficult to keep track of it all. From personal experience, despite all the datebooks, smart phones, tablets, desktop computers and laptops...it's hard to keep everything straight in this wacky business of the show.